Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Arizona, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Nevada.

In Arizona, AZCentral reports on how for the first time ever citizens will get to choose whether their state representatives get a pay raise or not.

In Massachusetts, Hub Politics reports about state senate republicans’ new blog.

In Mississippi, Alaskan Jambalaya has a post about Hank Paulson lobbying efforts before he became Secretary of the Treasury.

In Nevada, Vote Gibbons Out is asking people to dig into the state level campaign finance reports. Apparently they are difficult to decipher them when they are hand written. I wonder if the FEC has that problem with Senate campaign finance reports since the Senate is not required to file electronically. Indecipherable election information should become a thing of the past. www.Pass223.com

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Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Texas.

In Montana, MTPolitics.net highlights the new Montana Election wiki.  The wiki aims to be an all stop shop for all of Montana’s elections happenings.  It includes elections from the county to the federal level.

In Nevada, Blue Sage Views talks about how much money in earmarks Rep. Dean Heller has gotten in the last two years.  There is definitely some work in EarmarkWatch.org for Rep. Dean Heller according to his $32 million earmarks.

In Oregon, Loaded Orygun blogs about his experience trying to cover an Executive Session of the Lake Oswego Council.  Executive Sessions are closed except to journalists.  There are no clear rules about whether citizen journalists are allowed to be credited and so TorridJoe was asked to leave.  This incident is requiring Lake Oswego to adopt a policy regarding new media journalists.  Stayed tuned to Loaded Orygun for more info.  They should check out the Open House Project’s section on Citizen Journalism Access.

In Texas, blogHouston points to Texas Watchdog posting of Houston City Council’s financial disclosures on their website.  Since this information is not available online now this watch dog group is doing it for them.  How nice.

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Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news.This week I have highlights from Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas.
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This week I have highlights from Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Oklahoma.

In Maryland, Brian Griffiths asks for some sunlight from the Anne Arundel School Board Nominating Commission. The Commission had a meeting for nominating candidates for the school board election. However, they did not let the public in to evaluate the nominees or let citizens find out why they chose these individuals.

The Turner Report and Missouri Politics have stories about the Missouri state government lifting campaign donation limits. That’s right the Missouri State Legislature approved a bill that would eliminate campaign donation limits.

Blue Sage Views, in Nevada, has a great post on information state employees post on the internet for the public to see. It is interesting to see what kind of state government information is available.

GetRightOK, in Oklahoma, highlights Sen. Coburn released an oversight report about state agency spending. The report Coburn’s office released on Monday is about U.S. Department of Agriculture expenditure’s on conferences.

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A coalition of regional and state-based environmental groups is attempting to stop the State of Nevada from authorizing the construction of three new coal-fired power plants in the state. Three regional power companies are negotiating with the state environmental regulators behind closed doors. And it?s reported that the power companies are drafting a memo of understanding with the state over the level of greenhouse gas emissions that will be allowed from any new power plant built in the Silver State. In secret. The Nevadans for Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy has asked the state agency to open the negotiations to the public.

By excluding the public, the state is denying citizens a place at the table where a monumental decision will be made, one that has serious ramifications for the state. Coal plants are naturally dirty and belch out huge amounts of pollution and greenhouse gases, all things that will be increasingly regulated. The environmentalists argue that the construction of the plants pose a huge financial risk for the state?s electric consumers, and citizens and business owners should have a voice in the negotiations. Even some local voices in favor of the plants have called for regulators to open up the hearings and include the environmentalists.

A little transparency seems in order. 

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